September 30, 2016 – Comprehensive Approach

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Anchor lead: A team approach is important for sustained weight loss, Elizabeth Tracey reports

Balloons, staples, evacuation devices – a multitude of minimally invasive techniques are now available to help people lose weight.  Tony Kalloo, director of gastroenterology at Johns Hopkins, says that in order to be successful, every approach must be comprehensive.

Kalloo: What’s really important is for patients to undergo nutritional and behavioral counseling.  We need to understand what are the triggers that make us eat more? Part and parcel of all our endoscopic treatment programs is that we do behavioral modification, and you see a nutritionist, and we do frequent follow-ups. So that you change your lifestyle, because many of these endoscopic treatment options are for the short term only. For example the endoscopic balloons are there for six months.  So it means that if you have not changed your lifestyle in six months you will regain the weight.   :33

Kalloo says when a team approach is taken to weight loss, the majority of people are successful in keeping the pounds off.  At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.